
This flooding issue is really absurd. For one thing, I was told that Pchum Ben usually marks the end of the rainy season, but that was over a month ago and it rained for hours last night. I like rain, but not when it ruins people's lives.
Sarah attends a Khmer-language church in Russey Keo, a poorer area where the floods have been especially bad. Often, the church can't meet in its normal location due to flooding, so it meets on the side of the road, several blocks away. Often! Last night, she wanted to go to Bible study at someone's house, but was told that motos can barely get through there because of the knee-deep standing "water." (Don't even THINK about the diseases in it.) Anyone who can has moved in with friends or even found a new house. This neighborhood is only two or three miles from my house!
This is not a new problem. But it's been vastly exacerbated in the last year or so by a building project that involves filling in a lake with sand, along with forced evictions. Many locals protested the project to the government. The government now drains downtown runoff water into this neighborhood as well. See a connection? It's hard to say, but they think it's to punish the protesters. Brilliant, eh? "It's already flooded. Let's send more water that way." Last year, a high school closed for months in this area because it was under four feet of water. Thousands of residents saw an improvement when the city paused in filling the lake, but now the project has begun again. Japan is helping Cambodia plan an adequate sewage/drainage system for the city, but I have no idea how long that'll take, or how many officials will get rich off the funding.
So, just to recap:
1. Heavy rains => floods
2. Building new developments => filling in a lake => floods and protests
3. Protests => draining other parts of the city here => floods
4. Japanese aid => rich officials and hopefully improved drainage in the future
If my blog is shut down next time you log on, you'll know that Prime Minister Hun Sen found it and that I'm on a plane across the Pacific.






